The Wisdom of God: Jesus or a created thing?

Published: 30 January 2010(GMT+10)

Correspondent Suzanne H. wrote to Dr
Carl Wieland (CMI-Australia’s Managing Director) to ask just a short
question, but one which opens up many issues for consideration:

“How blessed is the man who finds Wisdom,” according to the Proverbs of Solomon. “She is more precious than jewels; and nothing you desire compares with her.”

Dr Carl Wieland

I have a question for you and would like your answer.

Recently it has been stated by a Pastor that “Wisdom was the first thing that
God created”. This has happened on more than one occasion and has greatly
disturbed me and subsequently led me to a short study on wisdom. As a result I have
written to the Pastor and am awaiting his reply.

I would however, value your answer to his statement.

Your sister in Christ

Suzanne H

Dr Wieland replies:

Dear Suzanne

Thanks for your query. I’m sorry if my answer seems a bit ‘roundabout’.
In what follows, I refer more than once to the apologetics site www.tektonics.org—both my colleague Dr Sarfati and I find some very useful, God-honouring information
on there, though it’s not appropriate for us as a non-denominational
ministry to do a “blanket endorsement” of everything on any other site,
of course. And I hasten to add that this is not an area of personal expertise for
me.1

Your pastor has very understandable “face-value” reasons for making
such an assertion. Take, for example, Proverbs 8:22–30:

“The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there
were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with
water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth:
While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of
the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a
compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he
strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea his decree, that
the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of
the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing always before him … ”

Wisdom, like information, is really a non-material entity

But the use of the word “created” to refer to Wisdom causes difficulties.
If we think of Wisdom in the normal understanding of the word, what does it mean
to “create” Wisdom? When one thinks of creation of the universe, that
really refers to material systems, i.e. systems of matter (mass/energy), plus time
plus space. But wisdom, like information, is really a non-material entity.

And there is a bigger issue. Most people who have studied the matter carefully,
comparing Scripture with Scripture, end up concluding that the “Wisdom”
here in mind (and elsewhere in the so-called “wisdom literature” of
the Bible, which I should state here is of a quite different type than the historical
narrative of Genesis) is really the Logos, Jesus Christ Himself. (Similarly,
John 1:1–18 seems to allude to another contemporary
Jewish concept, the memra or “word”: the “memra
of God” was considered in some way to be proceeding from God, but also to
be divine itself—see Christmas
and Genesis).

This issue of whether wisdom is to be equated with Christ is of course not a test
of orthodoxy in itself. But if we were to add this time-honoured understanding of
Wisdom to a statement that Wisdom was “created”, then that could be
taken to mean that Christ Himself is a created being, which would be a serious matter
indeed. (This is what the anti-trinitarian cults like
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians claim in denying Christ’s
Deity. They also point to Paul’s statement that Christ was the “firstborn”,
covered below.) So a pastor might be making such a statement
in innocence, but the audience could think that he was saying that Christ was a
created being, when this may not be in his mind at all.

Of course, the idea of a created Christ is heresy, undermining as it does His deity,
in addition to contradicting other parts of the Bible which make it clear that the
Lord Jesus is eternal. But it is important to note that there is not necessarily
contradiction between Christ’s deity/eternality and the idea that Wisdom (Christ)
was “brought forth” from God the Father, as we shall see.

First, let’s look at the evidence that Jesus and Wisdom are one and the same.

In
this section of the Tektonics site, you will find some interesting things
to support the orthodox view that Jesus Himself is Wisdom, the “Logos”
of God.

But what is the import of all of this for the understanding of the term “firstborn”? It is simply this—that since, according
to Nicene Trinitarian Christology [i.e. historic, orthodox, Christianity—CW],
creation takes place in and through the Son,
the Son must therefore in a sense be begotten outside of God so that the
creation of that which is distinct from God may so occur. And note how
easily this fits in with the Wisdom paradigm, as Von Balthasar pointed out above.
According to Wisdom Christology, since the Father is the source of the
entire Trinity and the Son proceeds from the Father, therefore any act of God
will originate in the Father and be expressed in and through the Son—it couldn’t
be any other way. Note also that the Colossians hymn above speaks of the Son being
the ‘image’ of God (Ca) before it speaks of his being ‘firstborn’
(Cb). This significantly tilts the scales in favor of understanding Paul to be telling
us that the Son existed within the Father prior to his becoming ‘firstborn’.
Why? Because Paul is alluding to Wis. Sol. 7:26 (‘she is a reflection of
eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of
God, and an image of his goodness’, cf. 7:25b).

Having said that, the site goes on to say that the ‘firstborn’ as applied
to Christ is normally taken in another way altogether by commentators who are aware
of the way in which Paul’s statements in other parts of the Bible make no
sense unless Christ is truly God, not a created being. It says:

According to most commentators, of course, ‘firstborn’ is to be understood
as referring to Christ’s primacy in relation to creation (with a similar line
being taken regarding ‘the beginning’ in Rev. 3:14) over against the possibility of a temporal reference.
William Barclay states that taking ‘firstborn’ in a temporal sense would
‘include Jesus Christ in creation rather than identify him as the Creator’,
and that this would be a neglecting of ‘the rest of Paul’s thinking’.
(Jesus As They Saw Him, 399) After examining several possible meanings,
he concludes that there ‘is only one real solution to the problem. The word
prototokos has quite commonly another meaning which has nothing to do with
time at all. It means first in place, first in honour. (400)

Likewise, Witherington states that ‘the firstborn terminology is found in
each stanza but in neither case should the reference to birth be taken literally.
In the first stanza the Christ is said to be the author of all creation, so the
term prototokos probably doesn’t refer to his being created but to
his existence prior to all creation and his precedence and supremacy over it, just
as he also precedes all others in the resurrection of the dead. Verse 16 in fact
stresses that Christ created even the supernatural powers and principalities, which
began as good creatures, as did the human race.’ (The Many Faces of the Christ,
82)

And so on. There is obviously a great deal more that could be said, and that has
been written. In short, your pastor may be well-meaning and may for all I know be
quite orthodox in his understanding of creation and Scripture, the Gospel, etc.,
and perhaps unaware of the potential theological consequences of the statement.
And as indicated, in one sense, his comment (especially if just a throwaway line
and not the basis for some other doctrine or teaching) is not without justification.
If, for instance, he does not agree that the personified Wisdom is really Jesus
Christ, God the Son, that would certainly not make him a heretic, though it leaves
to my mind huge unanswered questions about what it could mean otherwise.

I can see how someone could use this as the “beginning point” of all
sorts of quasi-mystical understandings of Scripture, including on creation. But
in another sense in order to be able to comment properly one would need to know
exactly how and what your pastor was saying, otherwise there is a risk of being
quite unfair to him.

In short, my own personal view is that Wisdom is really Christ, and that Christ
was not created but is coeternal with God the Father, but that in some way we don’t
comprehend with our finite fallen minds, the Father is nonetheless the ‘source’
of the Son. One ancient analogy compares Father and Son to the sun and its light:
the light’s source is the sun, but the sun’s very nature is to emit
light (as per Gen. 1:14 ff. God made the sun precisely as a lightgiver
to earth), so they are co-eternal. Similarly,
God the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, while the Father’s
nature is to beget the Son eternally. (For more information, see Trinity: analogies and countering critics.) This is reflected in the classic Nicene Creed
of AD 325:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of
the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not
made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.

The language of Proverbs is really using terms that our finite, earth-bound and
time-bound minds can understand about concepts that they probably can’t fully
comprehend.

So I can understand why you would be alarmed at the idea of Wisdom being created,
and would not use that word myself. What is the first thing that God (i.e. God the
Father) brought forth out of His own essence, before He created the universe? The
answer (though always needing to be qualified as to its very specific and narrow
sense) is most certainly Wisdom = the Logos (cf. John 1) = Christ. I.e. Christ pre-existed, within the Godhead,
that act of “bringing forth”. Hence the creation of the universe is
not mentioned until v. 3, after the Logos is stated as already existing
with God (v. 1).

Even then, I would suggest that all else being equal, consider cutting your pastor
the maximum slack, as they say. For one thing, even the use of such terms as “before”
is problematic when we realize that even time was a part of what God created when
He made the heavens and earth. So the language of Proverbs is really using terms
that our finite, earth-bound and time-bound minds can understand about
concepts that they probably can’t fully comprehend.

I hope that has been of some help.

Sincerely,

Carl W.

Addendum: NT Bible scholar and CMI’s Information Officer,
Lita Cosner, added the following comment after the response was sent (after
expressing her general agreement with its thrust):

The idea that Christ is Wisdom in Proverbs is something that orthodox Christians
can disagree on, and that people can fall into heresy on in both directions. For instance,
the feminist Sophia Christology says that since Wisdom was personified by a woman,
Christ must be, in some way, female. Because Wisdom is female in the Proverbs, I
disagree that there is a one-to-one correspondence between Jesus and Wisdom; mostly
because of the danger of Sophia Christology and the problem of the Second Person
of the Trinity being depicted in female terms, which is totally contrary to all
the rest of Scriptural references to God (see
What’s in a pronoun? The divine gender controversy). I think Wisdom
is the personification of a divine trait that the son being addressed in Proverbs
is implored to follow rather than the adulteress who is the sort of anti-wisdom
in Proverbs. So Wisdom would be uncreated, but a divine trait which all 3 of the
Persons of the Godhead would share in. But the OT is outside my area of expertise,
and my own view is subject to change pending further investigation, and it’s
an issue which orthodox Christians can differ on. But I would totally disagree that
Wisdom was created; it is a trait which the Godhead possessed in eternity past.

Further Reading

References

Tektonics seems to us to be aligned very much with biblical
protestant orthodoxy, while at the same time it looks closely at not just the type
of language (e.g., Proverbs is clearly not historical narrative, as Genesis is)
but also at the vital issues of what it meant in the cultural context of the times,
etc. This is not the liberal “loophole-hunting”, but is something which
tends to enrich our understanding and often clarifies important things. Note, too,
that Protestant sites such as this may refer to extra-biblical sources, such as
the Apocrypha—not as having divine authority, but to try to shed cultural
contextual light on what the original hearers/readers would have understood.
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